


Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

by Steerpike13713



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Episode: s04e10 Our Man Bashir, Gothic, Holodecks/Holosuites, Jealousy, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 12:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12189588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: In which Julian's choice of holoprogramme for the evening is a little different, the night Garak breaks in.Inspired by a tumblr post: http://mailorderfictionalcharacter.tumblr.com/post/162074311950/star-trek-au-whereinStar Trek au wherein…Julian Bashir and Kathryn Janeway switch favourite holoprogrammes, but each show’s holosuite plots stay the same.i.e. on Voyager, Janeway almost exclusively plays the Jane Bond holoprogramme; falls in love with a Bond Girl; M briefly comes to life and leaves the holosuite.Meanwhile on DS9, Bashir is spending all of his time as the governess for bratty children and Garak breaks into the holosuite to lecture him about superior Cardassian parenting techniques. the bodies of the DS9 staff are possessed by mean children. somehow Bashir still shoots Garak.





	Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sure at which point I became the 'rewrite canon episode to make less sense and also be shippier' became my niche in this fandom, but here it is.  
> This is only a brief excerpt, and a lot of the dialogue is taken from the original episode. In my defence, though, I couldn't come up with a whole plot for Janeway's holo-novel from thin air, and what I've done with it here was weird enough, borrowing from a few Gothic favourites.  
> Title from the Neil Gaiman story of the same name, which you really should check out.

That Doctor Bashir was spending an inordinate amount of time in the holosuites was hardly anything new. He’d been making weekly trips to Quark’s with Chief O’Brien for upwards of a year now, usually playing out some war or conflict or other from human history. So long as it didn’t interfere with their lunches together, Garak hadn’t much cared. Julian could fritter away his time with the Chief if he liked, it was his time to waste. He’d even offered discounts on the costumes, and as holosuite costumes made up a good...perhaps a quarter, at a stretch...of his business he hadn’t considered it much of a loss. At least the archaic military uniforms were a change from the usual parade of deadly dull wraparound shirts that seemed to be in vogue among humans, for reasons quite beyond Garak’s understanding.

For the past fortnight, however, the good doctor had not been playing out episodes from human military history with Chief O’Brien, and he had not been having lunch with Garak. He’d been friendly enough when he’d come in to collect the latest costume - a rather dull grey affair, but there was no accounting for taste, particularly not Doctor Bashir’s taste and at least it didn’t involve too many clashing colours - but rescheduled their lunch for that day, and then rescheduled again a few days later, and that had been the point at which Garak had decided he really did need to find out just what it was about this new programme that was so absorbing.

Asking posed a marked difficulty if only because the natural time to do so would be at one of their lunches, which kept growing fewer and farther between. Garak hadn’t realised how used he had become to spending his lunch hour in the Replimat with Julian, talking about some work or other of human or Cardassian literature. For some reason, the doctor’s tastes seemed to have taken a turn towards the macabre lately, not that Garak could object. _Rebecca_ had not impressed him, but _Jamaica Inn_ had been an enjoyable enough exercise in psychopathology, and _The Turn of the Screw_ had genuinely disturbed him, although he had taken care to conceal that response from Julian. It was not a genre that had ever evolved on Cardassia - indeed, any upstanding Cardassian protagonist would have turned Maxim de Winter over to the authorities the moment they even began to suspect his crimes - but Garak could almost see the appeal of it. There was something in being afraid while knowing you were perfectly safe, Julian had claimed, that many humans found quite enjoyable. That, Garak felt, was all well and good...but making a holoprogramme of it really seemed to be taking the thing a bit far.

It had not taken much to bribe Quark into telling him which holosuite it was that Julian had rented. Or to break in. Really, Quark probably ought to look into tighter security for his holosuites, anyone could have done it.

The rather palatial country house he stepped into admittedly came as a bit of a surprise. It was dark, and human eyes would be able to make out very little of the bare stonework and dark, heavy furniture, with no light to see by except the flickering of firelight through a door that stood ajar across a vast and echoing hallway. There also seemed to be a storm going on outside. A loud and unnecessarily dramatic storm, Garak amended, as a deafening roll of thunder sounded outside. He could hear muffled voices somewhere nearby, and followed the sound and the firelight until he could see through the half-open door.

There was no light in there but the fire, and a few dim, smoky lamps that seemed mostly placed to cast ominous shadows rather than provide any real illumination. The same heavy furniture, the same dark colours, and before the fire stood Julian, and a tall man, dark-haired, presumably handsome to the human eye, though Garak couldn’t see anything especially appealing about him. They were standing altogether too close for decency’s sake, Julian staring up into the man’s face, and Garak couldn’t help but feel the faintest stirring of quite inexplicable annoyance at the sight of it.

“What _is_ happening in this house, really?” Julian demanded, so low Garak had to strain his voice to hear it across the room. “What’s on the fourth floor that you want me kept out of there? How can you not know-?”

“These are questions you must not ask,” the taller man hissed back. He was pale as a ghost, his hand tangling itself convulsively in the sleeve of Julian’s white shirt.

“I don’t care!” Julian snapped back. “You brought me into this house, you asked me to help those children, you can hardly complain when I do so! Beatrice fantasises her mother is still alive, and I’ve heard stories in the village-”

“Don’t pursue this. Mr Bashir- _Julian_ , I beg you-”

Garak raised his eyebrows, quite unimpressed. Even he had known better than to simply tell Julian to leave something alone. Even for a holosuite simulation, this...individual...did not appear to have any particular understanding of Julian’s character.

“Why not?” Julian demanded, “What are you-”

But, before he could finish, the taller man stepped forward and, without so much as a by-your-leave, kissed Julian full on the mouth. Julian had apparently been expecting this, Garak noticed sourly. At least, that was the impression he received from the enthusiasm with which Julian responded. Garak would have expected him in real life to pull away or demand an actual explanation rather than all this prevaricating, but apparently in the holosuites his standards were lower, or maybe he’d simply played this scenario out enough times that he already knew the answers. Still, he supposed Julian at least deserved a round of applause for that performance.

Julian and his partner looked up almost immediately, and it was really quite gratifying to see how Julian pulled away.

“What- Who is this?” the holosuite character demanded, white-faced and furious.

“An unexpected guest,” Julian said quickly, “Excuse me, sir.”

Garak’s brow-ridges lifted a little at ‘sir’, even moreso when the character made no other move to protest.

“I like the suit,” Julian said, crossing to meet Garak in the doorway.

Garak nearly preened. “Thank you.”

“Now, get out.”

Oh, surely not. Garak hadn’t gone to all this effort to be ordered out this soon. “But, doctor,” he said, playing wounded, “I’ve only just arrived.”

Julian glared at him. “Breaking into a holosuite during someone’s programme is not only rude, it’s illegal. I should call Odo and have you arrested!”

“What an extreme reaction that would be! You must be very embarrassed by this programme!” Garak let his eyes linger on the holosuite character still standing by the fire like an abandoned toy. Whatever the storyline was, it hadn’t sounded at all the sort of thing Julian wanted it widely known he had an interest in, not when he’d been so embarrassed about admitting he had read _Rebecca_ to begin with.

“I’m not _embarrassed_!” Julian said - lied, Garak thought, the good doctor coloured so very prettily -  as he brushed past Garak and into the echoing hallway beyond. “I’m annoyed that you have intruded into my privacy-”

“Oh, privacy indeed,” Garak said, hastening after him, “I think it goes far deeper than that, doctor. Ever since you’ve received this new programme you’ve spent virtually every free hour in the holosuite, but you haven’t told anyone what the programme is.”

He stared theatrically around the cavernous entryway, and saw that really rather delightful blush deepen slightly as he did so. Oh, _very_ intriguing, doctor.

“Am I supposed to?”

“No, no,” Garak said hastily. “No. But you‘re such a...forgive me...a _talkative_ man, and it’s _so_ unusual for you to have secrets...”

Almost unheard-of, in fact. There were things he didn’t speak of, but even those were not truly secrets. Garak had no doubt that if he were ever to ask Julian seriously he would hear those things as well, but there were so many more intriguing details about the doctor that he had somehow never found the time to take a deeper interest in the parts of his life that had come before Deep Space Nine or before his occasional stories about the Academy and his studies there.

Julian shrugged off Garak’s hand. “I must have picked up that habit from you,” he said evasively. “Now, if you will excuse me-” He was already edging back towards the firelit room and the holosuite character he had left, and really, Garak didn’t want the fun to be over yet.

“Is this fantasy of yours...truly revealing of your inner psyche?” he tried, making Julian stop in his tracks.

“What?”

Garak stepped closer, as close as that hologram simulation had been earlier, close enough that he might steal a kiss himself, if he liked. “Is that why you’re so protective? Are you afraid that I’ll find out some humiliating secrets of the _real_ Julian Bashir?”

Julian snorted. “Well, I don’t dream of giving it all up to become a private tutor to a pair of _extremely_ bratty children in a Victorian manor-house, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said dryly.

“Well, if you’ve nothing to hide...then why not let me stay?”

Julian let out a long, defeated breath. “All right,” he said shortly, and Garak let out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. He could, almost certainly, keep Julian from getting distracted by needless romantic subplots, he thought. It might even be quite enjoyable, with that one caveat. “Now,” Julian went on, “I have to be at work in two hours, so keep quiet, and don’t rain on my parade.”

“Parade?” Garak asked, intrigued. This hadn’t seemed like the sort of setting in which one would normally see a parade, although he wouldn’t be at all averse to taking one in while they were here. He’d always rather enjoyed watching them in the streets of Kardasi’Or as a child on the major holidays, and they were a remarkable sight even to an adult’s eyes.

“...never mind,” Julian said moodily. Out of the corner of his eye, over Julian’s shoulder, Garak could see the holosuite simulation from before walking away through a door in the far wall. He smiled widely.

“Don’t worry, doctor, I can be very discreet - you’ll barely know I’m here! But, if I may make _one_ observation...”

“Garak-”

“I only want to point out that your...ah... _lovely_ companion is leaving,” Garak said, with no small degree of smugness, watching the simulation go, hopefully never to return, although Garak probably shouldn’t get his hopes up.

Julian looked around. 

“Odd,” Garak said, trying not to sound as if he wanted to hiss with satisfaction at having driven off the interloper. “He seemed so insistent in his advances just a moment ago. I wonder what scared him away...” Julian turned slowly to face him, wearing an expression that was just a little too polite to be actually murderous. “Oh, no,” Garak said, delighted despite himself. “You must be incensed, in fact, if I were in your shoes, I would challenge me to a duel here and now with the fireplace pokers!”

Julian let out a maddening little hiss between his teeth. “I can see I’m going to regret this,” he muttered.

Garak put an arm around Julian’s shoulders, more daringly than he would have dreamed of with another Cardassian, who would know what the gesture meant, and how bold it was to offer. “Don’t worry, doctor,” he said cheerfully, steering him back into the room with the fire. “We’re going to have a wonderful time! After all, what could _possibly_ go wrong!”

“You’ll be bored,” Julian said, throwing himself down carelessly on the sofa. Garak took a moment to appreciate the costume - yes, it _had_ been worth the trouble of hand-embroidering that waistcoat, even if Julian had thought it a tad flashy, which had stung from a man who once voluntarily went out in public in eye-searing orange trousers and a purple shirt - then joined him. 

“Oh? I’ve been quite entertained so far, doctor...”

“No, I mean...” Julian huffed. “It’s...not really a story that’s meant for more than one player.”

Garak raised his brow-ridges. “Then why don’t you talk me through the story and let me decide for myself?”

Julian coughed. “That...might be difficult. It changes a lot depending on who- on what I choose. But...that part of it should have settled now. Where would you like me to start?”

“The beginning would seem the most natural place, doctor.”

Julian grinned, and nodded. “Right...well. Um. It’s 1864, about a decade after the end of the...I think it’s the Crimean war, it’s not one that’s ever really interested me so I don’t know the details...anyway, my character has been hired as private tutor to the two children of a nobleman, Lord Burleigh.”

“Not at all your usual fare, doctor,” Garak said teasingly, “Is a war about to break out?”

“No, no. Um...it’s more of a supernatural mystery. Well, sometimes it’s supernatural - I’m playing the quicktime version, so I’ve had time for more playthroughs than most people go for - it generally always takes a couple of days to get to the end, though.”

That, Garak thought, would at least explain just how much time Julian was spending in the holosuites. “And what is the substance of this mystery?” he asked, smoothing his fingers idly over the velvet of the sofa.

Julian’s grin lit up his face. “Well, uh...the basic mystery is always the same, and that is what’s going on in this house, and that can play out one of two ways.”

Garak raised his brow-ridges to signal that he was listening and nodded Julian on.

“If you're...uh...if you play it one way, it turns out Lord Burleigh - that’s my employer - has imprisoned his first wife in the attic and driven her half-mad with abuse. I then have to find a way to help her and her children escape from this house, usually in such a way that it burns down, trapping Burleigh inside to die.” Julian smiled awkwardly. “I don’t normally play that version.”

Garak blinked. “Why ever not? It sounds no more absurd than any of your usual diversions. And, really, it’s only a holosuite. You wouldn’t really be murdering anyone.” More was the pity, he thought. Fictional or not, the thought of Julian’s holographic employer dying in a fire was quite an appealing one. That would teach him not to fondle his domestic staff.

“I know that, I just...” Julian gave him an irritated look, “The other way has Lady Burleigh be actually dead and a ghost.”

“Did he actually murder her this time?” Garak said mildly.

“No!” Julian frowned. “Well...maybe. Kind of. By accident. It’s...sort of complicated. For a start, she wasn’t actually his wife.”

Garak raised his brow-ridges. “No? I had thought that this era was rather stricter than the Federation is at present about relations outside of wedlock.”

It had been one of the most familiar things about older novels, even if it could not account for the peculiar insistence that two people could not sit alone in a room together without being presumed to have had sexual intercourse, which could only be attributed to humanity’s reputation as the most sex-obsessed species in the Alpha Quadrant being proven right yet again.

“Record-keeping during this period wasn’t especially brilliant,” Julian said distractedly. “She was...uh. Actually, it turns out she was his older sister. And murdered their parents.”

“...I was under the impression that there were children.”

“There were. She...uh.” Julian swallowed. “Apparently the two of them spent most of their childhood imprisoned together on the fourth floor, and as they got older...“

Garak wrinkled his nose. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, doctor, but is this usual for your species?”

“No! That’s rather the point - Gothic novels are meant to explore social taboos, and incest is...well, I can probably think of a few more serious taboos, but not many. Maybe cannibalism, but that’s debatable.” Julian grinned, rather sheepishly, and raked a hand through his hair. “She killed herself and tried to kill him and the children when he tried to end things, and now her ghost haunts the house trying to finish the job so that her family can be together in death.”

“Charming,” Garak said acidly. “And I had thought _Rebecca_ showed the greatest depths to which a human could sink in pursuit of ‘love’. Really, doctor, I can’t say I think much of your taste - that was Lord Burleigh you were canoodling with when I came in, was it not?”

Julian snorted. “‘Canoodling’, really? I don’t think anyone has seriously referred to it that way in at least two hundred years. And it’s more complicated than that - the book is pretty clear that Rebecca was abusing Maxim for years-”

“Only if we are to believe Maxim, and since he is trying to justify having murdered her at the time, I fail to see how we are supposed to take his evidence as entirely reliable,” Garak pointed out. “I suppose you are going to attempt to justify your...employer’s...appalling behaviour the same way?”

Julian shrugged. “He was pretty young when it started, and we’re never given much of an indication she cared about his consent - besides, it’s never a good idea to think too deeply about holosuite plotlines,” he added, sounding quite evasive now. “They’re meant to be a game, not high art.”

“I have never understood why humans insist on making such distinctions,” Garak said haughtily, mostly to annoy Julian.

“Yes, you do!” Julian protested, rising admirably to the bait. “What about what you said about Ryloth’s enigma tales?”

“I said they were a poor example of the genre, not that the form itself was not worth consideration,” Garak retorted. “To consider an entire subsection of media automatically devoid of artistic merit based purely on ungrounded prejudice-”

Julian raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you the one who said that holonovels couldn’t possibly compare to the written word and that literature is, in fact, the highest possible form of art?”

“That,” Garak said waspishly, “Was a matter of personal taste, not a value judgement. There have been holoprogrammes I have greatly enjoyed.”

“Really? Which ones? I’d like to see the holo that finally convinced Elim Garak to give it a try.”

Garak did not blush. Cardassians couldn’t, and he had never been more grateful for that fact than he was just then, as he felt heat rush to his face, hidden behind his scales. It was not that there was anything precisely wrong with ‘Regency romances’, as he had read Heyer and Austen called, as a genre. Indeed, they were among the more enjoyable forms of human literature he had yet found. It was only that, having spent their entire debate on the subject criticising the obsessive focus on marriage, and marriage for love at that, or the terminal idleness of the genre’s protagonists, he couldn’t imagine Julian would let him live it down if he were to discover how much Garak had actually enjoyed them. Even if he _had_ meant it about most of those criticisms.

“Maybe another time, doctor,” was all he said instead. “Although I must say your taste in men is rather alarming. One would think his having murdered his previous spouse would be warning enough for you.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “Since he’s a hologram anyway and thus incapable of murdering anyone, I fail to see what your point is. It’s not as if I deliberately seek out murderers in ordinary life.”

“Do you not, doctor? I am very disappointed to hear it,” Garak said blithely, and enjoyed the way Julian’s ears went pink at the implication.

“All right, then. I don’t deliberately seek out _other_ murderers. You’re the only one for me. Now, if that’s everything-”

There was a low and sinister clearing of a throat from somewhere behind them.

“Mr Bashir,” said a woman’s voice. A very _familiar_ woman’s voice, rendered low and forbidding, and with an accent rather like Julian’s own, instead of the usual Bajoran lilt. “I do believe your presence is required with the children.”

Julian startled, and then whipped his head around. “Major Kira?”

Garak turned to look too. Sure enough, there was Major Kira, although Major Kira wearing an expression more sour than Garak had seen from her in a long time, unless in the company of Gul Dukat, and a wide-skirted grey gown and white cap that really did _nothing_ for her, and probably would not have done anything for anyone.

The Major went still at the sight of him. She seemed for a moment almost nervous, which was an absurd sentiment to imagine on the Major, who could never have been described as having a particularly timorous disposition.

“My apologies, my lord,” she said, “I did not see you.”

“… _what?_ ” Julian spluttered, staring. “I mean- _What?_ Major, is this some sort of joke?”

The Major drew herself up a little, “I am not, Mr Bashir, in the habit of making jokes.” Her eyes lingered, rather coldly, on how little space there was between the two of them, and Garak sighed, because it was that or snarling.

“Just how many people did you bring?” Julian demanded, slightly wild-eyed.

“This wasn’t my idea,” Garak nearly snapped back. “Major?”

“My lord?” the Major repeated, adopting an expression of faintly disapproving puzzlement.

Garak raised his brow-ridges. “Although,” he added, “I will say she is getting quite into the role.”

“Nerys, please,” Julian started.

“Mr Bashir!” Kira said haughtily. “I believe you were hired to care for Lord Burleigh’s children, were you not?”

“...yes,” Julian replied, somewhere between distracted and mortified. “But how do you know about that? Have you been downloading my holosuite programmes?”

“Perhaps,” Garak interrupted, “This isn’t Major Kira after all.”

Julian scowled. “I’m beginning to think you’re right. Computer,” he called, “Restore the image of Mrs Templeton back to its original parameters.”

“Unable to comply. The character parameters of Mrs Templeton are correct.”

“I’d say someone’s been tampering with your programme, doctor,” Garak said, with relish. Hopefully they’d deleted that infuriating creature Burleigh as well, or at least replaced his appearance with someone Julian would find unattractive enough to restrain himself.

“If you’ve quite finished with this absurd display-” Major Kira – or rather, Mrs Templeton, as she seemed to be – started.

“He isn’t,” Garak said.

Mrs Templeton stopped short. “My apologies, Lord Burleigh, but I was under the impression you wished for Mr Bashir to be under my authority, so long as he was employed here?”

Garak stared. He looked at Julian, who stared back, looking slightly stricken.

“It’s the multiplayer mode,” he muttered, “I told you this game wasn’t meant for more than one person – well, not more than one person if they aren’t-”

“I see.”

Evidently, that human proverb about wishing carefully was more pertinent than Garak had known.

Julian swallowed. “Computer,” he called again. “Freeze programme.”

“Unable to comply. Computer control has been disrupted due to station-wide emergency.”

“Emergency?” Garak repeated. Quite what sort of emergency could be relevant to the running of Quark’s holosuites, he didn’t like to imagine. Even the whole business of Gul Dukat’s failsafe programme hadn’t done that.

Julian raised his voice, as if that would affect the computer’s function. “Bashir to Ops. What’s going on?”


End file.
